---

Budget (No.2) (Northern Ireland) Order 2005

My Lords, I, too, welcome the presentation by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I join the spokesmen of the two main parties in welcoming the noble Lord’s suggestion that there will be some movement towards better scrutiny of legislation for Northern Ireland. Any movement in any direction can only be good, and I very much welcome that. I thank him for his remarks and I acknowledge the work done by the two spokesmen for the major parties in putting pressure on to get to the point we are at today. I took great heart from the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland. Despite his training in accountancy and having spent four hours studying the document, he could not make too much headway with it, so I do not feel too bad. But in the absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, this is an opportunity to raise a number of topics which I think have currency in Northern Ireland and deserve to be answered. They are all areas which are funded from the document in front of us. Under the funding arrangements for the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure outlined on page 47 of the Northern Ireland Estimates 2005–06, I should like to consider the funding of community festivals. In a Parliamentary Answer of 21 June, I was informed that the funding for the year 2004 for the West Belfast Festival, which is regarded as a nationalist event, was in excess of a quarter of a million pounds. Other national festivals, including New Lodge and Ardoyne, also received substantial public money. I have no problem with funding nationalist or other festivals. But there was no government support whatever that year for the annual Orange demonstrations in any part of the Province. Does that not seem one-sided? Further, when I examined the Answer, I noted that the Events Company and the Belfast Regeneration Office provided funding between them of £122,720. Did these sums come from those organisations’ budgets or were the amounts just paid out of DCAL and the Department for Social Development funding? If they were paid out of budgets other than their own, was it from the interim funding budget—a pot of money in existence today which was developed between DCAL and the Department for Social Development? Could the noble Lord indicate how big the fund is, how big it may have been in 2004 and to where the funding went? Could he also inform us what the criteria for access to the funding are and what proportion has gone to non-nationalist events? My understanding is that the position this year is not much better. In other Parliamentary Answers dated 21 June, I was informed that, to date, £115,000 had been allocated to the West Belfast Festival. I expect total funding for the event to reach at least a quarter of a million, similar to last year. Add to this all the other nationalist festivals, and the figure could be almost half a million. Yet for the entire Province, only £33,657 has been allocated for Orange celebrations, despite the fact that this year they are regarded as tourist attractions and are included in both Tourism Ireland and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board’s publications of events. That is despite the fact that a lot of effort has gone over the years, and will be witnessed again next week, into changing these marches into a tourist attraction and making them much more culturally acceptable to all people so that they can go along and enjoy an interesting day out. They are accessible to everyone in the community, unlike some of the nationalist festivals. I understand that the interim funding for this year amounts to half a million pounds. My understanding is that £50,000 will go to Maiden City Festival, £52,000 to Queen’s University and almost £400,000 to nationalist events. Last year, DCAL attempted to carry out an audit of funding for festivals. The department stopped the process when it discovered that the proportion was at least £9 for nationalist festivals to £1 for Unionist ones. With this sort of information and my experience as chairman of the Ulster-Scots Agency, I believe that a big threat to the stability of Northern Ireland is the green caucus that operates in the Northern Ireland Office and has shades in other departments, most notably DCAL. Clever wording of letters and Parliamentary Answers cannot disguise the clear determination of DCAL only to support things Irish and hold up and treat in an offhand and dismissive way things that are not Irish. The NIO at all costs seems to provide everything that Sinn Fein/IRA ask for, but little for the rest of the community. I ask the noble Lord for a full investigation into the funding processes in DCAL. That should include examination of the business cases for all festivals and the time taken to process applications. This is an issue which will not go away. I beg understanding from your Lordships which would allow me to return to a topic that I have raised several times before: the scandal of Waterways Ireland. Funding for that organisation comes partly through the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure. Details of the £9,639,000 granted to Waterways Ireland for 2005–06 can be found on page 47. Waterways Ireland is one of the cross-border implementation bodies set up as a result of the Belfast Agreement of 1998. The advantages of having an actual cross- border body seem limited to Unionists, but it is important to nationalists. Unfortunately, the recent activities of Waterways Ireland have done more to undermine confidence in cross-border bodies than anything a Unionist could do. We have 21 cases of the bullying of staff. To date, one has been proved against the chief executive. The other 20 cases, with the backing of the Republic’s Government, are being pushed into a mediation process. In some cases, it looks as though the person accused of the bullying is organising the mediation and appointing the investigator. I know that the Minister gave me an assurance that I would be allowed to see the outcome of reports into the further 20 staff members and their cases, but the chief executive’s response to that seems to be to try to push everything into mediation which he will control. Can the Minister assure me that is not the case? Interestingly, the chief executive who was found guilty of bullying is still in his job, but the person he bullied has been sacked. What confidence does that give to anyone that the cases will be dealt with fairly? In the case of appointments without competition there is much outrage. It may be accepted practice for the Fianna Fail Government to appoint its supporters into organisations without open competition, but in the case of the position of director of marketing and communication, the job is located in Northern Ireland and is subject to Northern Ireland law. I have no idea whether the appointed person is the best for the position because I cannot find out what his qualifications are and what previous positions he has had. Perhaps the Minister can help me in this area? Leaked risk assessments for the organisation are very worrying and have not been addressed. I outlined the difficulties to your Lordships in a recent debate, but received no satisfactory answer. I can assure noble Lords that the issues with Waterways Ireland are not just in my imagination. Many major newspapers produced detailed articles about aspects of each scandal. A number of investigative journalists are hard at work producing more, and included in that number is a least one television network. I cannot stand by when there is bullying. Bullying in the work place is a major scourge of society today. If the Government do not act to punish bullies in the organisations that they fund, and if the bully is rewarded and the bullied loses his job, what message does that send to other bullies? That is another issue that will not go away. Under the allocation to the Department of Education found on pages 63 to 78, I would like to raise the proposed changes to the Northern Ireland education system, a topic to which the noble Lord,   Lord Glentoran, has referred already. The Department of Education seems to be bent on driving through the proposals as set out in the Costello report, much against the wishes of the vast majority of parents, teachers and educational professionals. The Household Survey demonstrated that the majority of those who responded wanted to do away with the transfer test in its current form, but they wished to retain academic selection. What they clearly did not want is a community-based comprehensive system based on selection by postcode. We in Northern Ireland have some of the best schools in the country and they have consistently produced higher average results than any other region of the United Kingdom. Can the noble Lord the Minister confirm that the Northern Ireland education system is funded £1,000 per pupil less than the average in the rest of the United Kingdom? Is that the real reason behind the current crisis? We also have no independent sector as the quality and diversity of schooling provided dispenses with the need for one—unlike the rest of the UK. Comprehensive education does not work. It failed the children of England, Scotland and Wales and should not be allowed to fail the children of Northern Ireland. The reverse should be the case. I am interested to know the Minister’s opinion of these matters. How we educate our children is how we define and determine the future of our society. Also on education, I should like to raise the issue about funding for education as an additional language. That is also found between pages 63 and 78. Unfortunately, for all the talk, there has been very little action. Early last week senior members of the Department for Education—not the Minister—met with representatives from the education boards, organizations such as the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM) and trade unions. They discussed the proposal that NICEM had originally put in March, that the infrastructure that currently exists for English as an additional language—for example, money going to the boards to run teams of experienced EAL curriculum support teachers, should be kept in place for the next academic year, while discussions were carried out as to the best way to fund this area of education in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately that infrastructure has already gone in all boards except the South Eastern Education and Library Board, which has encouraged some of the schools to use the allocated money to buy in to an EAL-teacher-support-serve from the board. But even in the South Eastern Education and Library Board this service is now much depleted and the team of teachers has been reduced from 13 to five. While the redundancy of those curriculum support teachers is a major concern, the most important aspect of all of this is the effect the loss of an experienced EAL teacher and all that he or she can bring to the classroom will have on the children. The teacher can provide a bridge between a child, newly arrived to Northern Ireland, and his teachers and between the child and the rest of his classmates. The EAL teacher can also provide a bridge between the school and the child’s parents, many of whom do not speak English at all. The EAL teacher can give guidance in helping to develop policies of whole-school integration and, very importantly, anti-racism. Under the common funding formula, the vast majority of money for EAL pupils goes directly to the schools and is not ring-fenced—each school gets £800 per annum per child. There is no way of tracing how and even if the money is actually spent on EAL support or resources. What is the delivery mechanism for the funding of EAL and how is it accounted for? Moreover, can the Minister explain how the Department for Education will ensure the delivery of appropriate, professional and experienced support for EAL pupils, their teachers and schools in September and during the following academic year? While on the subject of education, I refer to a Parliamentary Answer that I received, again on 30 June 2003 [HL 635], concerning the bailing out of a religious order in Middleton by the purchase of a school, a chapel and a cemetery. Who made out the business case for the purchase of that property, the only new premises purchased by the education department for many years? How was the case for the payment of money to the order worked out before the premises were taken into the control of the department? How was the 5p year rent considered and worked out after the purchase, the 5p being paid by the order to the department? Can the business case for that purchase be lodged in the Library, or can we access it in any other way? Or was it, as many suspect, a stitch-up by the then Minister of Education, Martin McGuinness, and the Dublin Government to use hard-pressed education funding to support a religious order? I want to pick up on a few points that have been brought to my attention by the British Medical Association regarding general practitioners in Northern Ireland. Details of funding for the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety are on page 171 of the estimates. First, global sums have been incorrectly calculated for GP practices under the new GP contract, a fact which has caused endless annoyance to GPs in Northern Ireland. GPs had global sums calculated to run their practices. However, because the Government did not put enough money in the global sums, 90 per cent of practices are going to lose out. To correct that, minimum practice income guarantee was invented. That took a practice’s GMS earnings for one year and added staff costs to calculate the MPIG. In Northern Ireland, the Department for Health, Social Services and Public Safety released funding to the four health boards for practice staff just after the baseline year. Although given the discretion to include those staff in MPIGs, boards—at the behest of the department—did not include those staff salaries in MPIGs, causing financial distress to many practices with sums ranging from a few thousand to in excess of £30,000. GPs are using the dispute resolution process of the contract to address those matters. Why did the department push the boards not to include staff salaries in MPIGs? Secondly, in the new GP contract, employer’s superannuation payments are included in the global sums/MPIG. However, in the baseline year, employer’s contributions were at 5 per cent for three quarters and 7 per cent in the last quarter, which gives an average of 5.5 per cent. In England, there was a Treasury transfer and contributions went from 7 to 14 per cent, and the full extra 7 per cent was added to GPs’ MPIGs. In Northern Ireland, the department and boards refuse to fund employer’s contributions and, although they have added only 5.5 per cent to GP budgets, they are deducting 7 per cent, which is the level at which the payment now is. Why? Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, sessional doctors, formerly known as locums, have been able to join the National Health Service pension scheme since April 2001. The department has promised the BMA that Northern Ireland sessional doctors will be able to do so but, more than four years later, they have yet to bring forward the legislation to allow them to do so. It has promised that those doctors will not be disadvantaged and will be able to backdate payments, yet the Inland Revenue now says it will not relax the rules that allow only 15 per cent of a salary to be paid in one year, and that appear to prevent those doctors claiming their full amount. The BMA has received numerous letters and promises from the department, but no action. That is an absolute disgrace. If one of those doctors should die in service, they will have accrued no pension benefit, as English, Scottish and Welsh doctors have. Will the Minister comment in due course? There is also concern with regard to the board and department accounts. Although they expect practices to account for every penny that they are allocated, they appear not to apply the same levels of probity to their own accounts. There is much inaccuracy in the accounts and no one knows how much has been spent in any one area. Will the Minister give us an assurance that that will be investigated immediately? Lastly, all spending now requires a business plan approved by the Department of Finance and Personnel. The new GP contract committed £3 million to IT spend in general practitioner practices in 2004–05. The boards were then required to prepare a business case to justify that—although it was part of a UK deal. They paid PricewaterhouseCoopers thousands of pounds to prepare the case, which was also approved by the Department of Finance and Personnel in the middle of March 2005, too late to be spent. That also meant that the boards had no funding to purchase urgently required IT replacements and, put in a difficult situation, had to spend money from other budgets to meet emergencies. Why?